Outstanding presentation of a time when America almost came under dictatorship. The country moved irrevocably down the path of progressivism and changed the character of Constitutional America. I enjoyed the honesty of the narrative without the whitewash of historical embellishment left over from the post depression era writers.

This well written story has many lessons to teach modern America. Throughly research and highly credible it left me with a much better understanding of FDR and the politics of his time. I learned a lot about things I thought I knew. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in what is happening around them.

Amity Shlaes brings those bad old times back to life as thought it were yesterday. She does not have much commentary in this book implied or un-implied as far as I was concerned. I't pretty straight down the middle. Of course the history has been edited by her and that would be a type of editorializing I suppose. I really enjoyed it. Made me think. Made me wish Bush and Oh,bummer would have read it.

This book attempts to reform history to fit a particular political narrative.

It is propaganda. As propaganda, i found it kind of interesting. As a history, though, it is shockingly sparse. Your understanding of the Great Depression will be seriously incomplete if you only "read" this book.

The "Forgotten Man" is a valuable piece of revisionist history, and it has both the strengths and weaknesses common among works that attempt to recast history through the eyes of later generations. The greatest strength of the work is that it recasts focus on the people that did and still do largely control the fate of the American economy: the wealthy. The book makes it clear that the resistance of the wealthiest Americans fatally weakened the New Deal. Shale explains in chapter after chapter how the rich moved their investments off shore, filed suit, and lobbied against the New Deal on the radio stations and in the newspapers they owned. However, she never interprets this resistance as a series of selfish un-patriotic choices that only prolonged the nation's agony. Instead, for her the villains are the New Dealers who were concerned about the plight of the average American. Shale lays out a laundry list of failed and misguided New Deal programs and never gives any credit to FDR or his administration or to the New Deal programs that worked. Instead, the book is a one sided polemic against the New Deal. Shale never accounts for the incredible popularity of FDR and the New Deal programs that her heroes worked so hard to sabotage. She fails to mention that the resistance to the New Deal in the South that really started after 1936 was largely driven by fears that the New Deal would weaken Jim Crow and she does not make the connection between some of the successful projects, such as the TVA and Intercoastal Waterway, with the eventual American victory in World War II. If you are really familiar with the New Deal the "Forgotten Man" might be worth a read for a different perspective, but this should not be your introduction to the subject. In fact, among most of the over eighty set FDR is still a hero and I believe that they would disagree with Shale's view of the New Deal as a disaster.

Anyone who needs safe-zones should avoid this book. Then again, such people probably are clueless about the Great Depression and may not even know who FDR was, much less the two sides of the debate so ably described within these pages.

I'm in the middle of the book now, considering putting it down, as it got very bogged down in giving bios on every conceivable character. I feel like she's going to introduce every living American in the 1930s...